Church Hill, Whitchurch PL19 9ED 01822 612362

Caterpillar 0-2 Years

Our Caterpillar Nursery is registered for up to twelve 0-2 year olds, with a fully qualified and experienced staff team working to a ratio of 1 practitioner to 3 children at this stage of development and often with extra sets of hands from volunteers and a range of student practitioners.

Our aim is to support families in building positive and secure attachments with each child and working as closely to the child’s home routine as possible to ensure a consistent and safe experience for each child in our care.

With our Caterpillar children; our approach focuses on creating opportunities for sensory experiences, exploring taste, touch, smell and sound. We have a specifically designed space to support each child in developing a range of different skills in line with the Early years Foundation Stage Curriculum. From a quiet soft area, for children to explore many sensory resources and to snuggle up in our den area to a busy shared messy space where the children can get stuck into some very messy play opportunities such as painting, gluing, sand play, water play and exploring a variety of modelling materials. We also have physical play space to encourage and support our children in their physical development, and small world and role play resources, construction, jigsaws, shape sorters, musical instruments and lots more!

The Caterpillar Team work alongside the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework which is a child-initiated approach to learning; staff carry out observations on children and plan activities accordingly relating to child’s interests, skills, needs and abilities.

Each child has their own celebration book and staff track their development closely to support development. Parents are more than welcome to take the celebrations books away and arrange meetings with staff to discuss their child’s progress and development.

Our Blue Room is our shared sleep space, which is used during the day when the rest of the group are in the activity room. Newly refurbished to create a dark, calm sleeping area, this space contains a range of cots and low level toddler beds each with fresh bedding.

Accessed through our Caterpillar Nursery is a rooftop outdoor play area specifically for this age group. Our practitioners set it up to mirror the inside area and we aim to get out and about whatever the weather, as long as children have the appropriate clothing! As Dartmoor is so close by we often take the children for walks on the moorland nearby or take short trips to visit the local parks.